


Backyard Skulls

by orphan_account



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 12:39:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6804868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Third anniversary gift: crystal and/or glass. Sole tries to follow through. Deacon's there to help him pick up the pieces—or maybe just make sense of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backyard Skulls

**Author's Note:**

> first fic in years. first fallout fic in general. i definitely didn't do piper's character justice. i'm not even sure i did deacon's character justice.
> 
> maybe i'll write more?

The Survivor collects.

It's not unusual for him to collect odd knickknacks, telephones and typewriters and even a teddy bear or two (always handed to Dogmeat with a pat on the head and a soft croon of  _who's a good boy?_ ), all stuffed somewhere in his pack despite his companions near-constant reminders that whatever he's picked up is junk.

"You planning on opening up a museum?" Deacon asks one day, eyeing the globe Sole has his hands on. "Could fill it with New World artifacts. Charge an admission price. Be pretty good, yeah?"

Nate eyes the globe carefully, fingers tracing over continents and oceans that Deacon's not entirely sure still exist, and then sets it back on the desk he found it, lips twitching downwards.

For just a moment, Deacon regrets opening his damn mouth.

* * *

So, yeah, Sole  _collects_. But he's been collecting more often than ever lately, and it's not like the rest of the shit he manages to pull apart and push back together to create something useful, like a power generator or a goddamn toilet seat.

He picks up cameras and stares at them almost  _longingly_ , finger ghosting over the shutter like wiping away the dust and grime will somehow breathe life back into it. He picks up a decanter—explains to Deacon in a low, soft voice that they used these for the  _good shit_ , but the snark's just not there, and Deacon can't bring himself to comment on it—and wraps it in a tattered curtain, carefully placing it in his pack, dropping an assault rifle he planned to salvage or sell back at Sanctuary in order to make room for it. He takes a vodka bottle and, instead of stuffing a rag into it and turning it into a bomb, he pours the vodka out right at his feet, tucking the empty bottle inside his knapsack once only a few drops are left.

"Hey," Deacon says. "That's what we'd call a waste."

Sole finds him another bottle—beer, not vodka, shitty and warm, and Deacon's not really a drinker anyways, but Sole hands it to him with this  _look_ in his eye that just makes him want to drink, makes him want to think about anything other than the slight pout of Sole's lips, the shadows of his eyes that keep darkening as the days go on, the stubble that reaches under his jaw, makes Deacon want to sink his teeth in.

"Bottoms up," he says, flashing Sole a smile, and drinks it in one go.

* * *

"Deacon?"

He almost doesn't answer. He's got a shirt in one hand—well, a  _dress_ actually, because those are just as easy to find as shirts and pants, and he'd be able to pull it off if only he remembered to shave his legs every so often—and a needle in the other, adjusting the seam so it suits him rather than some slim, pretty housewife of a few centuries back.

The voice is jarring, irritating—it's not that he doesn't like her, it's that he doesn't like her questions, and he certainly doesn't like the look she gives him when she  _knows_ he's bullshitting.

Which is, to say, always.

But she's not wearing that expression now. Doesn't even have a pen or paper in hand, so if this is an interview, it's clearly a little unorthodox.

"Miss Wright," he says, suddenly turning on a southern drawl that he hasn't used in a few months. Southern belle. That would be a good disguise. He'd have to find the right wig for it, though. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

She frowns, mouth opening, preparing for a question or a lecture, and then she stops again, fingers brushing against the brim of her hat. "Have you seen Sole around?"

He pauses, but only for a second. Looks back down at the needle and carefully pushes it through the fabric, tells himself to  _relax_ , that he saw Sole leave with Dogmeat this morning, and that was normal. He couldn't be with Deacon all the time. He couldn't be with anyone all the time. Deacon felt that. He felt that less often these days, usually found himself craving Sole's company rather than its absence—but that's neither here nor there.

"He skip out on an interview?" he asks, pulling the thread through. The Southern drawl's disappeared. Too much effort.

"Very funny," she says. Bites her lip. Looks around to see if anyone else is listening in. All tells. Piper's so very  _obvious_ with her tells, but maybe that's what's good about her. Sole needs someone honest in his life. They all do. "One of the settlers—Jacoba, you know her, she has a sister in Diamond City? She's really nice, actually, we had noodles together—saw him heading West. Northwest."

Deacon waits for more and only looks up once he realizes there isn't any coming.

"Oh," he says, voice dropping low. "Oh  _no_. Piper, this is an emergency. This is catastrophic. This is the worst thing to happen since the nukes fell—scratch that, this is the worst thing to happen in the history of our  _planet_. No man has ever dared to go where he's gone—no human has ever ventured—"

"Alright," she snaps. He's smiling, but she's not. "What's in that direction? C'mon, I know you know. You know everything."

"Aw, thanks, darling, but I'm afraid my heart's already taken by another. Star-crossed lovers and all that."

"You're so  _impossible_." She throws her hands up in the air, but before she leaves, she turns to him, lowers her voice. "You know him better than anyone here. Can you check in on him? Make sure he's okay?"

Deacon doesn't answer. Piper doesn't give him time to. She's called away by Cait, muttering something about mutfruit and what she'd like to do with them once she gets a hold of MacCready,  _the skinny bastard_.

Deacon knows what's in that direction. Across the bridge. Through the woods.  _And to grandmother's house we go_.

He looks down at the dress in his hands and scowls. The Southern belle will have to wait until later.

* * *

He doesn't like vaults.

Deacon doesn't dislike a lot of things. Being mobile and flexible comes with the territory of a liar. He has to be able to fit different personas, all with their own fears and quirks.

He can come into the vaults, just like he can scale skyscrapers because Sole is a fucking maniac sometimes, and he thinks risking life and limb for some caps stash or a nice look at the sunset is worth it. He doesn't like it, though. He doesn't like feeling the walls closing in on him, doesn't like knowing there's only one exit, and  _especially_ doesn't like knowing that if the exit closes on him, only Sole can get him out.

He might like the guy, but that level of trust—that level of dependency—is something he might never be able to grow comfortable with.

The Vault's left open, though, same as it was when Sole first walked out. Deacon wasn't there then, but he was a few days later. He even headed inside, although that quickly turned out to be a mistake.

He deals with corpses all the time, but the sight of bodies, frozen and shocked, one of them covered in blood from an open wound on her forehead, isn't something he enjoyed.

He's brought his rifle—because who knows what kind of critters could be creeping around here and besides, what if it's a trap, what if Piper lied,  _what if_ —and he's got his finger pressed halfway down on the rifle. He doesn't waste a Stealth Boy, but he sure wants to. Not just because he wants to avoid whatever dangers might be lurking here, but because he's spying on Sole, a little bit. He doesn't want to confront Sole about this. He isn't even sure  _how_. For now, the plan is to simply sneak around and make sure Sole hasn't lost it totally, and then sneak right back out and tell Piper  _nothing_.

He's had better plans. This one in particular is foiled by Dogmeat, who immediately runs towards him once he catches the faintest  _whiff_ of Deacon (and not even Deacon's sure what  _Deacon_ smells like, given how often he changes personas). Sole reaches for the gun—and thank Christ he brought that, because if he walked here unarmed, there would be  _problems_ and they would have to  _talk_ about it, but as it is, they already have enough to talk about—and doesn't move his hand from hip, even when he sees Deacon, who's let his finger off the trigger in favor of scratching Dogmeat behind the ears, just how he likes it.

"So this is what you do when you're away," Deacon observes, slinging the rifle over his back. Sole's curled up on the ground, an empty bottle of alcohol—beer or something stronger, it doesn't matter, he looks  _wrecked_ —at his feet. That, and a thousand little tiny shards of glass. There's some sort of—circle, in the middle? Deacon's not entirely sure. It's like a bowl of glass, but half of it's broken and there's a lot of duct tape and some Tato flowers thrown on top of the whole mess. "Party all night long."

He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't have a script for this. There's no character he's played that'll be able to take the redness out from around Sole's eyes.

He's intimately aware that, in one of these closed pods, lies the body of the woman this man loved.

"Yep," Sole says, voice less slurred than Deacon'd expect. His hand goes from his hip to his face, rubbing his eyes in one fell swoop. "Me and Dogmeat had a crazy day."

He sounds tired. Deacon gets that. God, does he  _get that_.

"Had your own little arts and craft gala too," Deacon says, nodding down at the disaster of glass and crystal. He recognizes bits of salvage—a decanter here, a camera there. All pushed together into one ugly mess. He doesn't prod past that, doesn't ask—leaves it open. If Sole wants to talk about this, fine. If he doesn't, even better. Deacon isn't one for emotional backstories. Not unless they're fake.

"Third year anniversary," Sole says from the ground, smiling—but it's self-deprecating, his eyes narrowing briefly as he looks over the shattered glass. "Crystal and glass. I needed to get her—" His voice cracks and he stops, fingers curling into fists, and clears his throat. Deacon counts to seven before Sole continues. "Each year of marriage constitutes a new gift."  _Constitutes_. There's Sole, using that fancy  _education_ of his again. Sometimes Deacon flips through dictionaries—the few they can find that have any of the pages legible—and picks words at randoms, asks if Sole knows them. Most of the time, he does. If he doesn't, he just bullshits. That's when Deacon likes him the best.

"This would've been our third year." He shrugs, shoulders heavy like he's carrying the weight of the world on him. And he is, in a sense. The Minutemen, the Railroad—hell, even the Brotherhood of Steel's looking to recruit him, from what Deacon's heard. Everyone looking for their own savior, their one man that can make sense of this desolate wasteland. "I wanted to get her a gift. Art's, uh, art's never been my thing."

Dogmeat walks over to Sole, careful of the glass, and nudges at his hand with his nose, whining. Sole smiles briefly—a real smile, no self-loathing involved—and Deacon thinks,  _I need to get out of this. Fast._

Deacon thinks,  _It's already too late. It's too late. It's too late._

It was too late for Barbara too. His hand clenches briefly, his eyebrows drawing together for a split second before he smooths his body language out again, makes himself  _neutral_.

"I don't know," he says. "It's abstract, y'know? Reveals the depth of your  _soul_ , all the little pieces are, uh—all the bullets you've been dodging lately. It's a self-portrait." It's the best he can come up with on the spot and even he knows it's not that good, that it's probably more likely to earn him a middle finger and a snarled  _fuck off_ than anything else, but Sole snorts a laugh, hiccuping right after in a way that makes Deacon's heart  _ache_.

 "If those are supposed to represent bullets," he says, smiling even with the wetness in his eyes, "I think I need a few more decanters to smash."

* * *

 

Sole's decided Nora deserves an actual, proper fucking grave. He and the others—Preston definitely, he's too kind  _not_ to help with something like that, Nick and Piper too—will dig it up tomorrow, then move the body. Deacon has the easy excuse of being needed back at HQ, but he almost wants to stay, wants to watch—but he also doesn't, because he's not sure what he'll start seeing once he sees that body go in the ground. Or who he'll be seeing.

He's been thinking about Barbara an awful lot these days.

Sole tells Deacon his favorite stories about Nora, from the day they met to this thing she did with her hair when she was nervous, and Deacon just  _listens_. For once in his life, he doesn't comment, he doesn't snark, he just listens, quiet, settled next to Sole. Eventually, Sole inches closer and rests his head on Deacon's shoulder. Later, he falls asleep. Deacon can't feel his ass anymore and his back hurts from sitting in this position for so long, there's actual  _beds_ in Sanctuary that he would rather sleep in, but he doesn't dare move a muscle.

When they wake—rather, when Sole wakes, because Deacon's mastered the ability of waking before anyone else—Sole tells Deacon that he'll head back to Sanctuary soon, he just needs to say goodbye. Deacon heads out of the room to give him some privacy, but he catches the end of Sole's farewell before he exits the Vault.

"—you'd like him," he's saying. Deacon tries not to think about it,  _desperately_ tries not to think about it, but he can hear Sole talking still, and—"Really, Nor. He's good. He's great. I'll, uh, see you on the flipside, I guess. Or not." A short, quiet laugh and then a sharp inhale. A few minutes later, Sole finds Deacon outside the Vault, giving Dogmeat some well-deserved belly rubs.

"Okay," Sole says, wiping his nose. "I'm ready."

His hand brushes Deacon's just before they set off and he smiles, soft and sad. "Thanks."

Deacon clears his throat. "No problemo, Boss."

 _Fuck_ , he's got it bad.

 


End file.
